D90 - how to properly use Adobe RGB?

I use Photoshop as my post processing tool. I also use QImage for upsampling and Neat Image for noise reduction. I want to post images to the web as well as have them print properly and appear properly on my monitor. I understand Adobe RGB is best for post processing. Just not sure what the workflow is like and how to ensure consistency as I am bouncing around between my three apps.

Definitely in need of some enlightnement!

thanks,

brian
--
Brian Huether
http://www.pbase.com/bhuether

Colour profiles are only useful when printing, for anything else they are a pain. Most web browsers are not colour profile aware and this will lead to washed out, or darker or totally wrong colours. My advice is to turn anything related to colour profile off in Photoshop.
--
Pushed the button and the world stood still.

Only bother with wider-than-sRGB gamuts if you plan to print regularly, and if print gamut is critical - or if there's another requirement like satisfying Alamy's submission recommendations. For photos that will only ever be viewed on screen, stick with sRGB as it's simpler.

--
Mark.

change all your profiles to nikon srgb or standard srgb on your monitor, in your camera, printer, computer, and in adobe.

do not use adobe srgb

--
Renato.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhlpedrosa/
OnExposure member
http://www.onexposure.net/

Good shooting and good luck
(after Ed Murrow)

aerorail said:

change all your profiles to nikon srgb or standard srgb on your
monitor, in your camera, printer, computer, and in adobe.

do not use adobe srgb
--

Click to expand...

If you are strictly a casual shooter, or maybe a web-posting only shooter, this is (possibly) reasonable advice.

If you have any hope or plan or desire to (maybe someday) produce fine-art prints or to post for stock purchase, this is really, really, really, bad advice.

--Milt--

bhuether said:

I use Photoshop as my post processing tool. I also use QImage for
upsampling and Neat Image for noise reduction.

Click to expand...

Very nice setup ... similar to mine, minus QImage.

bhuether said:

I want to post images
to the web as well as have them print properly and appear properly on
my monitor.

Click to expand...

1) Have you calibrated your monitor? I bought I Huey pro colorimeter and the difference was night and day ... and I had been carefully calibrating manually using Normal Koren's calibration web site.

2) Is your monitor any good? The typical panel under $300 is going to be a TN panel and these are not very good for processing. As good as they look on first blush (I was very enthusiastic on the lovelu 1080p 23" Samsung I recently bought), after comparing with a decent monitor (My 20" NEC with PVA panel) you find quickly that TN panels have poor color consistency across the panel, and they have issues rendering muted tones in a gradient ... i.e. blurred foliage ... I get banding everywhere.

Anyway ... consider solving these two problems along with your workflow.

bhuether said:

I understand Adobe RGB is best for post processing.

Click to expand...

Well ... there are wider gamuts. The fact is, though, that you want at least Adobe RGB if you have a good printer with a wider than sRGB gamut. If you plan on printing at places like WalMart and Costco, just process in sRGB for now ... things will go very smoothly.

bhuether said:

Just not sure what the workflow is like and how to ensure consistency as I
am bouncing around between my three apps.

Click to expand...

Calibrate your monitor first. Then ensure that you use the ICC profile that comes with your printer, ink and paper. For example, higher end printers (Epson 2400 for example) will often be one of the profiles for which paper vendors will create a custom profile to match the combination of printer, ink and paper. Photoshop then allows you to "soft proof" the image, i.e. adjust it once paper and ink have been accounted for, for a truly vibrant print.

There are great sites out there ... look up "soft proofing", "printer profiles" and so on ... that should give you enough to get going.

It's not super complex though ... you calibrate your monitor to a standard ... you calibrate your printer / ink / paper to the same standard ... everything just kind of works.

One more thing ... if you are using normal Epson printers (for example), you should process in sRGB setting ... these printers are calibrated to sRGB.

bhuether said:

Definitely in need of some enlightnement!

Click to expand...

I hope that gets you in the game ... it took me many test prints to get it down ... but I can get perfect prints now that match my screen pretty much exactly. And that's with a normal Epson 340R and a calibrated monitor. I process in Adobe RGB and then convert at the last minute to sRGB for printing ... of course, I also softproof sRGB to make sure. But I want the master version (saved as PSD) to be in Adobe space. I also key the original NEF as well ...

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com

seems like the world standard is not adobe srgb but sRGB IEC61966-2.1
same as nikon srgb

seems easier to keep things at one standard and to save a lot of time and effort

but woteva this could be debated for years same as everything else here.
there is no right way
its an art

aerorail said:

seems like the world standard is not adobe srgb but sRGB IEC61966-2.1
same as nikon srgb

seems easier to keep things at one standard and to save a lot of time
and effort

but woteva this could be debated for years same as everything else here.
there is no right way
its an art

Click to expand...

You really should stop calling it "adobe srgb". It makes it look like you think the issue is one of which variant of sRGB is the standard, when that is not the issue at all.

Here's a synopsis of the current situation. Of the three RGB color spaces of reasonable use to digital photographers, the color gamut relationships are sRGB

It certainly IS easier to stick to just one color space, but if you pick the smallest, you lose colors.

Also, there is in fact a lot of science to color management.

--Milt--

Use Adobe RBG. This will leave you options in the future. When you post to a website like flickr save the jpg with sRGB. If you send to a photo house ask them what profile they use. Many will accept different profiles. If they accept Adobe RGB then you get a wider gaumet. If they only accept sRGB then you can use that too.

Always leave yourself options. Why go for the limited profile when it's a very simple step to use the better?

So here is the question of the day... Does calibrating the monitor have anything to do witht he color profile or is it simply a process of adjusting color based on a color chart?

Next major question. If I am setting up the workflow for Adobe RGB, will it screw up the way the monitor and photoshop display sRGB?

That is my major point of confusion. I want to be able to view mine and other people's photos on the web and for them to look 'correct'. And I also want the Adobe RGB files to look 'correct' on my computer.

So I take it ICC profiles perform a mapping? In other words, in Adobe I work with Adobe RGB and when it goes for printing, a proper profile maps the Adobe colorspce to the printer's color space?

thanks!

brian
--
Brian Huether
http://www.pbase.com/bhuether

bhuether said:

So here is the question of the day... Does calibrating the monitor
have anything to do witht he color profile or is it simply a process
of adjusting color based on a color chart?

Click to expand...

The process can be done a number of ways, but if you use a colorimeter, it will create a new ICC profile for the monitor every time you recalibrate.

bhuether said:

Next major question. If I am setting up the workflow for Adobe RGB,
will it screw up the way the monitor and photoshop display sRGB?

Click to expand...

Nope. The monitor calibration is about how the monitor displays white and black points and colors. The printer calibration is about how the ink is put on paper. Same principle. Each input or output device gets calibrated and things go smoothly from there.

bhuether said:

That is my major point of confusion. I want to be able to view mine
and other people's photos on the web and for them to look 'correct'.
And I also want the Adobe RGB files to look 'correct' on my computer.

Click to expand...

Calibrate your monitor, use something like Firefox, and all should be well. Safari will sometimes use embedded profiles and that can cause problems since few people know how to do that properly.

All output for the web should be created in sRGB color space and at gamma 2.2. That is the look of the web.

bhuether said:

So I take it ICC profiles perform a mapping? In other words, in Adobe
I work with Adobe RGB and when it goes for printing, a proper profile
maps the Adobe colorspce to the printer's color space?

Click to expand...

You work in whatever color space you want ... but , when you create your output, you must apply the profile for the device you will display on.

So ... I create and save an intermediate version as PSD ... in AdobeRGB. When I create the version for the web, I downsize to 800px, apply the sRGB profile, sharpen, and save.

On the other hand, when I print on my Epson, I apply the sRGB, upsize to the printed size, sharpen, and print.

When I make an output for, say, a COSTCO printer ... I download the exact profile for that printer (see http://www.drycreekphoto.com ) and use that for softproofing. When I have the costco version looking how I want it, I apply that profile to the file, upsize to the output size, sharpen, and save. Then upload to COSTCO. Works a charm

Look at Dry Creek Photo's web site for lots more info. Look at Normal Koren's web site for explanations about monitor calibration and printer calibration. And note ... monitor profiles are never used in photoshop or on printers. Printer profiles are used to soft proof in photoshop only ... they are otherwise absent from your workflow except when applied to a file for printing.

Note that I apply by converting to profile, not embedding profile. This was recommended on one of the web sites because of the spotty implementations out there ... so I suggest you get your work flow to work with this method.

Good luck.

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com

aerorail said:

seems like the world standard is not adobe srgb but sRGB IEC61966-2.1
same as nikon srgb

Click to expand...

That's a little simplified ... the standard color space for the WEB and more labs and printers is sRGB. But home printers and high end printers can do better than that. So processing in a larger color space can be beneficial.

Of course, it works better if you have a monitor that can also display the color space in which you are working.

aerorail said:

seems easier to keep things at one standard and to save a lot of time
and effort

Click to expand...

It is simpler to process in sRGB and to print in sRGB. Quite true. But it does not hurt to learn the profile technology.

aerorail said:

but woteva this could be debated for years same as everything else here.
there is no right way
its an art

Click to expand...

I suppose that might be true ... but here are people making stunning prints that cannot be made in sRGB ... so maybe that's the right way ...

On the other hand, the right way for someone who either cannot handle the complexity or simply does not care is to shoot and process and print in sRGB and be done with it.

--
http://letkeman.net/Photos
http://kimletkeman.blogspot.com

Thanks. I think I now get it!!
--
Brian Huether
http://www.pbase.com/bhuether

I second what Kim has said above. Its good sensible advice on using color management.

I would like to add a couple of things by way of explanation. First, an ICC profile works by specifying how a device-dependant color space can be translated to and from a standard non-RGB color space called LAB. For an input device, the profile specifies how to translate from the color space of the device to LAB. For an output device, the profile specifies how to translate from LAB to the device color space. To make a conversion from some input device to some output device the conversion software grabs both profiles and combines them to know how to make the conversion. This way for n input devices and m output devices you only need n+m profiles, not n*m.

For standardized RGB color spaces like sRGB and AdobeRGB, profiles are available that carry specs on how to convert both to and from LAB. This way Photoshop (or other software) can take a file from (say) some scanner with an input profile and convert to (say) AdobeRGB for its internal representation. Then later it can take its internal representation and convert it to (say) print properly on some specific printer. Notice how this scheme works to answer your question about how Photoshop can have either an sRGB or AdobeRGB file and as long as there exists a profile for your printer, printing just works.

One additional complication in translating between color spaces is that when doing a translation into a smaller color space, there might be colors in the image that aren't in the target space. There are four user-specifiable schemes for dealing with this problem called "rendering intents" that you can see (for example) in the driver screen when you print.

Second, its worth distinguishing between "calibration" and "profiling". Calibration is bringing a device that might have drifted over time back to some standard state. Profiling is taking the current state of a device and producing an appropriate profile to translate between LAB and that current state. In general, you want to calibrate before profiling -- things are more accurate that way. Also, periodic calibration means profiles don't need to remade just because of device drift.

Third, you need to understand that printer profiles are specific to not only a specific printer, but to the specific type of paper being used, to the specific make of ink being used, and sometimes even to the specific printer driver. Change any one of those and you need to change profiles.

Good luck. Doing color management is more complicated than not doing it, but its a manageable task and that way lies better photography.

--Milt--